In May 2008, University of Ottawa law students and The Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) in Ottawa filed a complaint with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada over alleged poor privacy practices by social networking site Facebook. The office of the Commissioner has released its report today. The three biggest concerns found:

• Facebook’s explanations of privacy are confusing and incomplete;
• Facebook applications allow application developers access to private information where it is not necessary; and
• when a Facebook account is deactivated, Facebook still retains personal information. This is in contravention of Canada’s privacy law

There’s a piece in the current Lawyers Weekly, “Commodification of contract drafting,” about some of the work that U.S. lawyer Ken Adams does. (The whole piece is on Adams’ site, page 1 and page 2, or here in a single page.) Much of the article deals with the obvious, such as the need for precision in expression and the dangers of using old-fashioned boilerplate. But three things caught my eye as being interesting.

First, Adams suggests that firms need rules when it comes to drafting contracts. The thought is that a firm style should be imposed where, presumably, certain . . . [more]

According to a report in the Times, the U.K. Justice Minister has agreed to move to abolish the crimes of sedition and criminal libel.

An act of sedition is one that incites hatred or contempt for the king, government or constitution…

Criminal libel is rare but similarly oppressive. Even though the vast majority of libel actions are brought through the civil courts, crown prosecutors can press charges for criminal libel if it is thought to be in the public interest. The penalty is up to two years in jail and an unlimited fine.

Something is considered defamatory if calculated

Last week the CRTC announced that in two cases it has issued notices of violation with fines to two telemarketers who called numbers on the “do not call” list. These are the first two such notices since the DNC list became effective, on June 30, 2006, pursuant to CRTC “unsolicited telecommunications rules.”

The CRTC released no information about the identities of the telemarketers or the size of the fines proposed in the notices.

This reluctance concerning publicity is in line with stated CRTC policy, according to which enforcement of the rules proceeds in stages, the first of . . . [more]

We recently tried something new with our consultation process and we’ll likely do it again. Lauren Bates, head of our project on developing a coherent approach to the law as it affects persons with disabilities, participated in a web based consultation with the assistance of Citizens with Disabilities – Ontario. Citizens with Disabilities provides on-line conference rooms that can accommodate various size groups for meetings, courses and interviews, among other uses, through their on-line Conference Centre. Apart from the convenience of format, there is the obvious advantage of accessibility. . . . [more]

The CRTC hearings we reported on previously were supposed to have finished yesterday, but according to the CBC actually continued today. See: Internet throttling benefits customers: Rogers, Shaw (cbcnews.ca, July 13, 2009). The CRTC apparently postponed Bell Alliant’s appearance at the hearing until this morning.

Additional sources are listed on my previous post here. . . . [more]

As you may have read in various news reports, one David Jonathan Ross is suing the Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General of British Columbia and the Attorney General of Canada because, he claims, the R.C.M.P.

attended at his residence near Hope, British Columbia. He alleges that he (and possibly others) was under investigation and was subjected to surveillance techniques that included “neurophone, advanced neurophone and subliminal messaging”. He says that, as a consequence, he suffers from headaches, sleeplessness, loss of normal brain function and related consequences.
Ross v. British Columbia (Public Safety), 2009 BCSC 930

Not surprisingly, . . . [more]

The office of the Ontario Privacy Commissioner has released a document praising Gmail for making connection via SSL available for all communications through their website. “If You Want To Protect Your Privacy, Secure Your Gmail” [PDF] points out that when you communicate with your email server over a public wifi network, your communications are vulnerable to interception unless you encrypt them. SSL, or “secure socket layer,” is a cryptographic protocol in fairly common use — you’ll have seen it in operation if you do internet banking or make payments over the internet, and you can recognize . . . [more]

Things were heating up in the world of biotech this week!

Hot deals — some of the biggest numbers Canadian companies have seen this year:

• Bioniche licensed its Urocidin product to U.S.-based Endo Pharmaceuticals for $20 million up front and the potential for over $110 million more; and
• Allostera raised $17 million in venture capital.

Hot entrepreneurs — new sources of capital and new training bode well for a fresh crop of companies:

• Teralys Capital opened the doors to start spending its $700 million fund; and
• Two new initiatives — one in Waterloo and one in Ottawa

In May 2008, Ontario passed the Access to Adoption Records Act, 2008, S.O. 2008, c. 5. As of June 1, 2009, adoption records in Ontario are now open. From an ad placed by the Ontario government in a local newspaper:

This means that adopted adults and birth parents can apply for post-adoption birth information from birth records and adoption orders.

An adopted adult, 18 years of age or older, can now apply for a copy of his or her original birth registration and adoption order. A birth parent can receive information from the birth registration and adoption order of

A sign of the times: for those who have been let go at work but feel too intimidated by the potential cost of a lawyer to seek legal assistance, comes the new service FiredWithoutCause to fill the gap. Have a read through the description below. I’m curious to hear from lawyers in the audience whether you see this type of service complementing or competing with your work?

From FWC’s social media press release (SMPR) from July 10, 2009:

FiredWithoutCause.com is a confidential online service that helps people understand their legal rights and maximize their severance package. The service provides:

• a 

Lawrence Lessig, a law professor at Stanford, recently said,

If you come to the Net armed with the idea that the old system of copyright is going to work just fine here, this more than anything is going to get you to recognize: you need some new ideas.

To illustrate the point, he uses this remix by Ophir Kutiel of Israel, where I’m currently studying law.

. . . [more]